The View From Planet Kerth: Extra! Read all about it: Nothing to worry about today!

Citizen Contributor

3:00 AM, Dec 28, 2012

Whew!

We dodged another bullet, didn't we? Turns out those ancient Mayans were wrong about the world ending just before Christmas.

But then again, did they really say the world would be ending? Well, not quite. They simply didn't extend their predictions past Dec. 21, 2012, and their silence on the matter seemed sort of catastrophic to our modern-day media.

But now, in our apoctalyptic-dodged afterglow, you have to ask yourself: Why would ancient Mayans continue predicting events past the end of 2012 anyway? If you could predict the weather perfectly for any date in the future, how much energy would you spend warning us that we might want to carry an umbrella on Wednesday, 3,000 years in the future?

The Mayan guy in charge of long-range predictions probably figured he could go home from the office and grab a beer before coming back on Monday to re-spin the distant prophecy top, or whatever it was that he used to see beyond 2012, which is where he left things on Friday.

But then life just got in the way—his daughter may have run off with that shady guy from the next valley, and dammit, they took the dog with them! You could see how a thing like that might throw him off his game, because iguana season was opening on Saturday, and good luck bagging lizards without a good iguana-dog.

All that seems obvious to us now, and it should have seemed obvious to our media long before Dec. 21, right?

But you don't sell papers with headlines that scream, "Everything OK! Nothing to worry about today!"

No, you get people to tune in to the nightly news by screaming, "The common household item that could kill you instantly—and it's right there in your kitchen! Tune in tonight! Your life might depend on it!"

And then, at the end of the nightly news, they tell you that it's a steak knife that could do you in if you plunged it into your neck. It's hard to argue with top-notch reporting like that. And they hold this life-saving warning until the end of the show—sometime after the weather report that tells you that the precipitation they've gone hoarse predicting for the past week may add up to a centimeter or two! Tune in tomorrow to find out how much a centimeter is!

Of course, those other dire warnings we hear in our media are genuine causes for concern, aren't they?

For example, TV the other day scolded me about the catastrophe that awaits us from global warming. Droning minor-key music in the background proved that this was serious stuff.

A map of the United States filled the TV screen as a scientist explained what would happen if all of Greenland melted. Water sloshed over the map, and New York city was utterly gone. But before you got the chance to breathe a satisfied sigh over a world without the Yankees or Mets in it, the map showed that Florida and some really nice Caribbean islands would become reefs with complex architecture. Shocking stuff!

All over the world, the scientist said, the story would be the same. Something like 12 billion humans would find their homes flooded. And what world could survive with two billion refugees roaming around, looking for someplace to sleep? That was the word he used—refugees.

The minor-key music swelled to a depressing crescendo.

But then, somewhere in the fine print came the information that all this could happen sometime over the next several centuries.So let me get this straight. Are you saying that sometime over the next 400 years or so, a flock of us will have to find someplace else to live? The way a bunch of guys packed their bags 400 years ago and sailed off to inhospitable places—places like North America?

Since then, we refugees have spent centuries developing crops that grow well in the climate of our new homeland. We have slowly built cities in places that are an ideal match for our industries, like shipping, fishing and mining.

But now all that is changing. We may not be able to stop the changes. If not, we will have to spend the next few centuries changing the way we do things. We might even have to build cities in different places and go live there instead.

Presumably the seas would rise gradually—over a long lifetime, maybe several centimeters (whatever those are. I missed the explanation on the news that night, fretting over a show about rogue comets. Or maybe it was earthquakes. Or killer bees.) In any case, the water will rise slowly enough to take a step backward as the waves lap near your toes.

But we won't have to pack our bags and sail off all at once.

Oh, it'll be rough on the polar bears (much to the delight of the seals), and we'll have to keep tinkering with the genetics of our corn and wheat to make sure they can grow in a climate that might be a tad warmer—or drier or wetter—a century from now.

But we've got time. We'll get the job done. Four hundred years is a long time to transform a continent's cities and crops, if that's what we have to do. If you don't believe it, take a look at a map of America in the 1600's.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop the damage. But there's no reason to burst a blood vessel in your head worrying about it, on top of all the other gloom-and-doom you hear on the nightly news, like Mayan mayhem and fiscal cliffs.

Take a deep breath.

We'll be OK.

We've got work to do, but we'll be alright.

In the meantime, don't feel guilty if you take the time to track down your daughter and your dog before the start of iguana season.

Of course, you won't hear that soothing message on the nightly news or read it in your morning paper, because nobody would pay any attention to an article that screams, "Extra! Read all about it: Nothing to worry about today!"

- - -The author splits his time between Naples and Chicago. Not every day, though. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Why wait a whole week for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Get T.R.'s new book, "Revenge of the Sardines," available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other fine online book distributors. His column appears every Friday.